Saturday, February 24, 2018

Russia Continues to Interfere in US to Support Donald Trump, Kirillova Says

Paul
Goble

Staunton, February 23 – Just as
Russian athletes continue to be caught using illegal drugs even after the
international sports community sanctioned Russia for its state doping program,
so too Russian operatives are continuing to interfere in American politics to
this day in support of Donald Trump even after their role in 2016 has been
exposed, Kseniya Kirillova says.

On the one hand, this is an act of
brazen contempt for the US, the Russian analyst says; but on the other, Moscow
is clearly doing so it because it believes the stakes are so high and that it
can escape ever being held completely responsible by changing “fake news” just
as Moscow and Trump regularly do.

“Interference by Russia in the internal
affairs of the US and its support for processes favorable to itself and
destructive for America is not restricted to past or future elections.It continues even today, without ceasing for
even a single day,” the US-based journalist says. Unless that is recognized,
Moscow will win additional victories it does not deserve.

In her article, Kirillova describes
what is known about the Kremlin’s use of social networks in the US, its
exploitation of its own media, and its promotion of ties with ethnic Russians
abroad and with American politicians it supports in the past. But her most
important insights build on that record and concern what Moscow is doing now.

According to the journalist, the
Kremlin “even today is continuing is support of Trump with all the same
measures which were used during the pre-election campaign” and that the Mueller
investigation has reported.Kirillova
draws that conclusion on the basis of a report she prepared in July 2017 (stopfake.org/kseniya-kirillova-propagandistskie-shemy-tramputinizma/).

As in 2016, the Russian media and
Russian Internet trolls used the same methods both to support Trump and to attack
his opponents, a program that has been effective enough that last month one
Russian commentator even claimed that “Trump is again ours” (topwar.ru/135288-tramp-opyat-nash.html).

Others have reached a similar
conclusion about the Russian effort. The American Alliance for the Defense of
Democracy examined during the second half of January 159 articles on URL sites
connected with Kremlin accounts on Twitter and found that 31 percent of them
were devoted to the notion of an anti-Trump “deep state” and attacks on the FBI.

And outlets within the Russian
diaspora also continue to act as they did during the 2016 elections, not only
overwhelmingly supporting Trump but threatening his opponents with street
protests if they try to impeach him or even continue the investigation into the
campaign (e.g., 7days.us/opasajtes-teorii-gosudarstvennogo-perevorota).

A year ago, Kirillova notes, she
warned that Moscow has shifted the Cold War to “within the United States” (lb.ua/world/2017/03/10/360818_ssha_holodnaya_voyna_vnutri_strani.html).
Now, the
situation has gotten worse, and “on its outcome depends the future not only of
American democracy but also the direction of the development of Western
civilization”